


Doubt Comes In

by 0pabinia



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast), Regret Return Reignite (Short Story)
Genre: (because it's Fourteen Fifteen), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Body Horror, Canon Non-Binary Character, Canonical Character Death, Chronic Illness, Inspired by Orpheus and Eurydice (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore), Memory Loss, Other, Post-Miracle of the Mirage (Twilight Mirage), bumbling deadly dumbass assassin gets an atonement arc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-14
Updated: 2020-03-14
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:40:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23144821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/0pabinia/pseuds/0pabinia
Summary: She could feel Fourteen’s hand in hers as she turned away from the land of the dead. But now she could feel their hand fading away, their touch so light it was maddening. Don’t turn around, she told herself. Don’t. Turn. Around.And then Tender’s alarm went off, and she sat up on the floor of the World Without End.Fourteen sat up too, out of the corpse still nestled in their bed.“Well. That was an adventure,” they remarked blandly. “Let’s see if I can still eat, shall we?”A TenFour Orpheus and Eurydice AU inspired by Audrey R. Hollis' EXCELLENT short story Regret, Return, Reignite.
Relationships: Fourteen Fifteen/Tender Sky
Kudos: 9





	Doubt Comes In

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Regret, Return, Reignite](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/567175) by Audrey R. Hollis. 



Fourteen Fifteen was not all there.

People had said this before about them – they were scatterbrained, or distractable. This worked very well for them, they said to Tender, because it made their marks underestimate them before it became time to strike. 

Tender never thought it would be literal. 

She could feel Fourteen’s hand in hers as she turned away from the land of the dead. But now she could feel their hand fading away, their touch so light it was maddening. Don’t turn around, she told herself. _Don’t. Turn. Around._

And then Tender’s alarm went off, and she sat up on the floor of the World Without End. 

Fourteen sat up too, out of the corpse still nestled in their bed. 

“Well. That was an adventure,” they remarked blandly. “Let’s see if I can still eat, shall we?”

* * *

When your best friend and colleague asks if you would bring them back from the dead, it comes as quite a shock. 

Nobody had brought anyone back for 200 years, mostly for a lack of trying. Citizens of the Fleet tended to have good long lives, and there were plenty of assistive technologies to keep a person in comfort until they felt ready to die. Fourteen Fifteen had rejected all of them.

“I’m already digital, Tender.”

“That doesn’t mean we can’t try to upload you into a Cyberbrain! It’s never worked before, but the engineers have been perfecting it off the way it naturally works!”

Fourteen reached a purplish-grey hand across the table to clasp Tender’s.

“There’s nothing we can do. It’s a chronic condition, and I always knew this would happen, but I very much wish it wasn’t happening at a time when I’m setting precedent for land use law all over the Quire System.”

“And stopping the Rapid Evening so they don’t blow this entire system up.”

Fourteen sighed. “And stopping the Rapid Evening.”

They rubbed their temples underneath their horns. “I would just really like to come back, Tender. I want to continue my work. I want to be here for Observation, and Sho, and…” They trailed off. “And I’m really scared. I’m scared of dying, Tender.”

Tender grimaced in sympathy. 

Fourteen let their vulnerability hang in the air before snatching it back out of sight. “Besides, think about how much information we’ll be able to bring back! There hasn’t been a resurrection since before Belgard died! This will be a first for the Quire System!”

“Will is an awfully strong word.”

“Well, it will take a lot of work. But you’ll help me, right?”

“Sure, I just have to learn everything about you, right? No big deal,” Tender smiled.

“Yes. And if you’re in, we need to start now. I’ve put together a dossier on my childhood and employment record for you to review tonight, and we’ll get started on oral interviews tomorrow.”

Fourteen retracted their hand and grabbed a sheaf of papers from a pile to their left. Tender flipped through the first few files. A birth certificate. Medical records. A highly classified, highly illegal payroll stub from Castlerose Inc. She could deal with this. 

Fourteen pushed their glasses up their nosebridge. “Are you sure, Tender?”

Tender shrugged. “If I lose you, I don’t have a choice, do I? I’ll do it.”

* * *

Tender spent the next few months at Fourteen’s bedside in the captain’s quarters of The World Without End. Every moment they were awake she was listening to them talk; about themself, about their experiences, who they had met. When they invariably passed out in the late afternoon, Tender was in the Mesh, talking to people they talked to, reading bits of their history, trying to learn all they knew. 

Sometimes, when they were both awake, Fourteen would ask Tender to touch them, to listen to their breathing. At one point Tender had cupped their face in her hand, and they had asked her to kiss them. She did. Their lips were chapped. 

Still, Tender told herself that they were just friends, that it didn’t mean anything more. Fourteen certainly hadn’t changed their behavior towards her at all, and Tender wondered if this was just part of their unique obliviousness.

When Tender wasn’t with Fourteen, she was in the Mesh, using her powers to create ever bolder and more beautiful buildings. This was the hardest part. Whatever stood at the gates of death, they didn’t just want you to know who you wanted. They wanted you to be creative about it. It didn’t matter which art form, but you had to make an offering to Death. It had to be the highest art, and pass muster from the strictest critic for the ultimate reward. 

_Orpheus is the one everyone remembers,_ thought Tender. _Could play so beautifully that he could make the heart of a planet cry, and he still couldn’t get her back. Well, if that is true, I’ll do one better._

Tender created palaces of sunlight and rooms of clouds. She taught fur to be floorboards and sound to be stone. She tamed terabytes of data into physical space and cooled plasma like a cup of soup in her hand. 

Once the building was finished, the feedback started. She brought in her friends first: Signet and Blueberri and even Grand Magnificent, that asshole. He strode in as aloof as a cat in a dinner party, but Tender found him 45 minutes later, crying in the moss room. He was lying on the thick green floor, bawling about how the use of negative space made him feel small. Tender helped him up and sent him back to Echo and Gig, who would hopefully deal with his whole…thing. 

Acre 7 stopped by as well, flickering as she greeted Tender and floated through the door. After what felt like 15 minutes, but could have actually been 2 hours, she pronounced it heartbreaking, and moved on. Tender had never seen her more put together than at the moment Acre 7 paid her that compliment, and it scared her. 

There was some talk of wheeling Fourteen out to see the building, but that eventually fell through. They expired peacefully on their bed one night, two weeks before the date their doctors said they were expected to die. Tender was sure that Fourteen would be miffed that they had lost the two weeks, but by this point, she knew what to do. 

As their eyes nodded shut for the last time, Tender grabbed their hand and held on with them. When they arrived at the Lake of Sorrows, Tender waded in after the boat, the water staining her legs and body iodine-blue. She climbed over the wall, and threw three steaks to the beast at the gate to let her pass. She slogged through the endless grey fields of the land of the dead to hear their judgement.

In the end, the hardest part was convincing Death to enter into the palace she had created with her art, to let them experience the building. Each room had something different about Fourteen, something Tender wished she could make solid instead of resign to fleeting feeling. And she had. She had thrown all she could of her experience with Fourteen into her art, and it was beautiful.

The rulers of the dead exited Fourteen’s palace, and pointed Tender in the direction of Fourteen’s shade. Don’t look back, they said. Barely daring to hope, Tender nodded, turned, and ran to the one she loved.

* * *

It was awkward looking for a person who wasn’t there. 

Some parts of Fourteen remained – one grey eye, floating lazily where it felt like a real eye should be, and bits of brain and lung. If Tender tried very hard not to look at them, glimpsing through the corner of her eye, she could see the two legs, four arms and horns she recognized as Fourteen’s. 

Still. It was very hard to have a conversation. 

Tender sipped her coffee, intimately aware of the fact that Fourteen was somehow manipulating their coffee cup, but was unable to keep the coffee from filtering right through them and onto the seat of the chair. 

“I’m, umm, sorry about that,” said Fourteen, equal parts sheepish and unabashed. 

Tender waved her hand. “Don’t worry about it. It’s your kitchen.”

She put the mug down. “If anything, I should be sorry,” she whispered. “I brought back less than 60% of you.”

“You did your best.”

“I could have done much better.”

They sat in silence as the light from Our Profit’s ship crested over Skein, illuminating the Mirage. 

“This is going to be difficult.”

Fourteen nodded imperceptably. Or, Tender was sure that if she could have seen them, they would have nodded. It was confusing.

Tender continued. “Everyone is going to want to know how death was. You won’t have time in the first couple weeks to work on anything, I don’t think. Besides, you should try to, uh, recover.”

“I’m fine, Tender,” said the shade of Fourteen. Their one remaining finger on their left hand reached up and tapped where their chin should be. “Come to think of it, I can’t remember much about the land of the dead. I remember being sort of cold, mostly.”

Tender gave a mock-angry smile and slammed her cup down on the table. “Damn it, Fourteen,” she said. “The one thing people want to know when you get raised from the dead, and you don’t even remember?”

Fourteen fidgeted nervously, almost blinking out of existence. They had predictably read Tender’s teasing as real anger. “I’m sorry Tender, but I just can’t!”

Tender rubbed her eyes. “I know. It’s not you Fourteen. I’m just so not looking forward to the amount of attention this will get us. If you can’t remember…and there’s only 60% of you…people will assume I’m a bad partner. Or, rather, a bad friend. I went after you and couldn’t bring you back.”

Fourteen was silent.

The next day, after the invariable round of interviews, Tender marched Fourteen back to their bed. If they had tired when they were whole after 5 hours of effort, Tender was sure that the remaining parts of their body weren’t going to do any better after the same amount of time. 

Their body had been cleared away, although it had left a strange brown stain in the mattress from the time it had lain there. It had been disinfected earlier that day. Tender pulled a fitted sheet over the stain and sat next to Fourteen on the bed. 

“Do you remember everything else though?”

Fourteen inhaled but didn’t speak for a good ten seconds. “I don’t think so. But if I didn’t, how would I know?”

“Let me quiz you. What did you want to do when you grew up, as a kid?”

“I wanted to be an explorer on the Sky Reflected in Mirrors. I wanted to go into the restricted sections and bring back incredible things. I never thought I’d be a lawyer.” They grimaced. “Or an assassin.”

Tender tapped her long nails desperately against her lips. “Okay, that tracks with what you’ve told me. Where’d you get the ship?”

“From a fisherman just before the Miracle. Remember, I was on the Sky Reflected in Mirrors, and had to get back to Empyrean to meet up with you and Signet. So I bought- wait, no – he gave me the ship.” Fourteen smiled. “I will never forget that kindness.”

Tender relaxed a little bit. 

“How did we meet?”

Fourteen scratched the remains of the back of their head. “I think it must have been some work thing, right? When I was first assigned the team by Cascara. Everything was new and important then, so I think I rolled meeting you into that whole experience of newness.”

Fourteen stared glibly away from Tender, looking for all the world like they had forgotten she was sitting there. 

“Tender? Are you okay?”

Tender felt like she was going to cry. They didn’t remember. And worst, they didn’t seem to realize they had forgotten anything. 

She wondered why this wounded her so much. Fourteen was just her friend. They had her back, and she certainly had theirs. They had gone along with this whole thing on the assumption that platonic love was enough. It had to be enough. It shouldn’t hurt her this much that they had forgotten when they met. That didn’t explain the terrible sinking feeling in her gut.

“Do you remember why you took the job? Anything about that?”

Fourteen’s right shoulder shrugged. “I guess I just wanted a change of pace, I’d taken a couple jobs with Castlerose, and I figured it was time to help people instead of hurt them.”

Tender pressed her eyes shut. “Fourteen, it was because of a Castlerose job. Someone took a hit out on me. You were trying to _kill me._ You don’t even remember?”

Fourteen sat up in shock. “I’m, erm, I can’t imagine ever hurting you, Tender.”

There was the sinking feeling again. 

“Fourteen, you told me about this a year ago. We didn’t talk for months. And you’re telling me you don’t remember any of it?”

“I did wonder why we didn’t speak for all that time.”

“Do you remember how many hits you took for Castlerose?”

“Three or four, I think? Not so many.”

Tender’s tail lashed against the frame of the bed. “You’ve killed 31 people, Fourteen. And you remember four.”

“I, umm…didn’t know?”

Tender threw up her hands. “I know it’s not your fault you forgot, Fourteen. But this is hard on me. I thought I was bringing back someone who took responsibility for their shitty actions. I thought – I’m – I have to go.”

* * *

Tender woke up to a message from Fourteen delivered to her door at 7am. The unit that was meant to project a hard-light projection of the sender had entirely glitched out. Tender had to wonder if that was a technical malfunction, or the machine reacting to a being that was half in the Underworld. Tender stared at the static as she absorbed Fourteen’s voice.

“I don’t think I’m the same person I was when I died, Tender. I don’t remember any of it, and I’m working to never be that person again.” They paused. “It’s like that philosophy problem, The Ship of Theseus? If you take out parts of me and replace them, when do I stop being me? I don’t know, and I’m really sorry. I want to make amends, just… tell me what I need to do. I’m sorry.”

The hard light projector fizzled and died, but Tender had already grabbed her purse and stormed out the door to the docks. 

When Fourteen opened the door to the airlock, they were met with a force of nature. 

“You have the gall to talk philosophy at me instead of apologizing? Please. There are 31 people dead because of you. Who’s going to take that responsibility? Not me, that’s for sure. Deal with your shit, Fourteen Fifteen!”

Tender’s voice was icy calm, but her tail had puffed up like a bottlebrush. 

Tender could hear, rather than see them step back. “I’m sorry Tender. I’ll try to make it up.”

“Good. You do that.”

Tender turned tail and huffed away. She could neither see nor hear Fourteen staring after her.

* * *

A week later, one Mrs. Castlerose was apprehended and interred in Contrition’s Figure. Tender thought it might actually be a worse punishment than death for her. But the icing on the cake was that 28 family members of victims of all sorts of tragic mishaps received a large sum of money in their accounts. 

Tender smiled when she received the news, but didn’t unblock Fourteen.

Still, she couldn’t stop thinking about them. How they would lay out an argument. How their Adam’s apple would dip in their throat before they spoke. How they would hiccup sometimes after they laughed. It was infuriating, because she had expected these types of thoughts to end when she had brought Fourteen back. Either she would bring them back and the thoughts would stop, or she didn’t bring them back and these thoughts would fade as she became less used to having them by her side. It wasn’t supposed to be this maddening halfway state, half caring about them, half pushing them away. 

Fourteen hadn’t emerged from The World Without End – The tabloids would certainly have picked up on it. Tender unblocked Fourteen and received no new messages.

Instead, Tender ignored her emotions the way she liked best, and threw herself into a project. She made a very basic synthetic armature made to look like a suit of armor. The metal itself was covered in gold and enameled inlay. The helmet was barred, to best hide or show off the absence of a face, and every joint was articulated in loving detail. 

She wanted to give it to Fourteen – if they were still alive, that is. She’d heard old reports of those who came back only to waste away, whatever body they had left being dragged back into death. 

Tender had made up her mind to give it to Fourteen in person, on Thursday. But on Wednesday, she received a knock on the door. When she opened it, Fourteen was even less corporeal, but definitely present.

This surprised Tender so much that for once she had nothing to say.

“Erm…could I come in?” asked Fourteen. 

Tender nodded, and let them in. 

Fourteen hated to start a conversation, but they also hated an awkward silence. 

“So, I’ve been doing some thinking. And, you’ve probably guessed, some other stuff too. Not that money or arresting people can make up for somebody’s death, but. It’s what I could do, short of going back in there for them. Which is what I’m going to do. Will you help me?"

Tender continued to stare. 

“That’s the dumbest idea you’ve had yet.”

Fourteen sputtered. “Why? It’s the very least I can do, and I have firsthand experience. I’m going to do it.”

Tender shook her head. “Listen, what makes you think you could retrieve enough of them to anyone’s satisfaction? You barely knew them!”

“The bond between assassin and target is rich and deep.”

“Cut the crap, Fourteen.” Tender’s eyes had retracted back into slit pupils, like she was looking into the light. “You know as well as I do that killing people is impersonal. Takes less human interaction than shaking their hand. We like to build it up, make it special, make it sacred, but there’s nothing there. And there’s nothing you can mine for an art project to get them back.”

Fourteen set their mouth in a stubborn line. “I have to try.”

“Fourteen, if I can only bring back 60% of you, how much are you going to be able to bring back of a person you knew for two days, five years ago?"

“I have known you and loved you and worked with you for years and years, and even then it was hard. One of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do, and I still didn’t care about you enough to bring you ba – "

“I have to try, Tender. I can’t truly fix the mess I’ve made of my life, and I was foolish to think I ever could. I just – I have to do something, and this is something I can do.”

The remains of their forehead were scrunched up in determination. Tender knew she would never be able to argue with Fourteen, not when they were like this. 

Tender sighed, and let the tension go from her body. 

“You can’t fix yourself, Fourteen. Haven’t you learned that by now, with all that time in Contrition’s Figure? You can only make yourself better than you were.”

Fourteen huffed. “I know that! I just want – I want to atone for it! I want to fix the problems I made! I want someone to tell me I’ve done enough! Because if it’s up to me, I know I’ll never do enough!”

“Oh Fourteen…” Tender sighed and pulled what was left of them into a crushing hug. “You’ve done enough for me. I truly believe you can make yourself better. I just don’t want you to be _stupid_ about it.”

Tender pressed her nose into Fourteen’s shoulder, inhaling the normal smells of their shampoo and the new, unfamiliar smell of rotting seaweed that they had developed after Tender had brought them back. 

Tender didn’t recoil. Instead, she whispered into Fourteen’s shoulder and half hoped they didn’t hear her.

“Wait a moment, you said you love me.” Fourteen looked confused. “In what way? Platonic, or, umm…”

“Not strictly… umm, platonic.”

“Ah, I see.”

“Tender, I meant what I said when I said I didn’t believe that I would ever hurt you. I only want good things for you, and I don’t know where I would be without you. So, thank you.”

Tender felt tears welling up in her eyes. “If it’s any consolation, I don’t know where I’d be without you. That’s why… that’s why I did this.”

“But, I’m not the same person I was before I died. You didn’t, uhh, fall in love with me. You fell for them.”

Tender sighed. “Fourteen, in the past few weeks I’ve seen you recover from _being dead_ , bring your former employer to justice, and try to do right by the people affected by your actions. If you’re not the person you were, I sure as hell want to get to know this new Fourteen.”

Fourteen stuttered, “Well, if you’ll have me, I would love to spend more time together, umm, get a coffee? Raise some dead people?”

Tender laughed. “I still think this is the stupidest idea you’ve ever had. And you were _in_ Provign Station with me.”

“But…?”

“But, I’ll do this. With you.”

The uncomfortable silence stretched out long and stifling, until Tender couldn’t handle it any more.

She leaned forward and kissed Fourteen right where their lips should be. Fourteen stiffened, but relaxed into the kiss. Tender put an arm around the remains of their torso, leaning into Fourteen. Her hand slipped into the chunks of nothing, but for once, Fourteen Fifteen had never felt so there.

**Author's Note:**

> Big thank you to Rain for beta reading this!


End file.
